


Dinner

by Severina



Category: Dark Harbor (1998)
Genre: Community: hc_bingo, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-28
Updated: 2013-12-28
Packaged: 2018-01-06 11:46:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 528
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1106441
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Severina/pseuds/Severina
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He sees the boy watching him over the edge of his book when they sit quietly in the evening.  The boy smiles when he notices, and David knows his own returned smile is weak, wary.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dinner

**Author's Note:**

> Post Movie. Written for LJ's hc_bingo challenge for the prompt "food poisoning".
> 
> * * *

There are days on end when he doesn't get out of bed, where he listens to the north wind whistling through the trees and buries his nose in the boy's soft hair and thinks that this is all he ever wanted. He straddles the boy's body and feeds him delicacies from the lacquered tray that he bought when he and Alexis went to China; takes great pleasure in using all the pretty, expensive, ridiculous things that Alexis loved. He smiles to imagine how shocked she would be at the decadent uses he has put to her Spanish riding crop and her Moroccan shawl and her delicate, hand-painted chopsticks.

Then his leave of absence from work ends, and David returns to the daily grind of client meetings and boring depositions. And he starts to imagine other things.

His young man seems restless.

They go for long walks in the woods when he returns for the weekends, make love in the fresh green grass. But David can't help but wonder if the boy yearns for the city. If the boy wants more than he can give.

He sees the boy watching him over the edge of his book when they sit quietly in the evening. The boy smiles when he notices, and David knows his own returned smile is weak, wary. 

He finds the boat moored at the dock, the knots imprecise and messy. But the boy denies having left the island, swears that he spent the day cleaning out the old barn.

He wakes up groggy and sore and doesn't think he drank that much wine the night before. He wonders what he might have done while he was so uncharacteristically impaired. 

He catches an early ferry on a Friday, arrives home to a crackling fire and an armful of willing boy and a dinner piping hot on the table. He takes his seat, folds his napkin precisely on his lap. Eyes the baked potato and creamed carrots and mushroom-smothered steak suspiciously. 

"You're so tense," the soothing voice says close to his ear. Strong hands knead his shoulders, and David closes his eyes, tries to relax back into that touch. But he can't turn off his traitorous brain, and in the end he sits up straighter, thinks he can feel the boy's disappointment as the hands drop away.

"Long day," he says shortly. Picks up his fork and pokes at his dinner, so lovingly prepared.

"You work too hard," the boy says. He crosses to the other side of the table and takes his seat, shakes his long hair out of his eyes. "I worry about you."

David looks down guiltily. Surely he's simply been imagining things. It's only the stress of the past year getting to him, the necessity for discretion until an appropriate amount of time has passed since Alexis's death playing tricks with his mind. His colleagues are not eyeing him distrustfully. Alexis's harridan of a mother hasn't contacted him in months. And the boy? The boy loves him. Didn't he already prove it?

He stabs his fork through the savoury mushrooms. 

The boy loves him. 

David meets the boy's eyes… and takes a careful bite.


End file.
